They say "follow the science" but what if its out of date?

The Gluckman Report.

This report was produced by the office of the chief scientist of New Zealand Professor Peter Gluckman in 2018 to address a number of issues that were occurring there due to high methamphetamine use.

It is cited by many vested interest groups in Australia as the reason why no action has to be taken to remediate former ‘smokehouses’ when the readings for contamination are 15µg/100cm2 (30 times higher than current Australian Action Level) or below.

These vested interest groups also claim the report is ‘major scientific research’.

When Professor Gluckman and his associates complied this report, he felt that there were no substantial studies on third hand exposure to methamphetamine contamination. His view was that the current Remediation Action Levels in New Zealand and internationally were too low and there would be no adverse health effects from living in a dwelling with readings of 15µg/100cm2 or less.

But he does cite on three occasions that this conclusion is based on 'no research' into the effects on a person’s health due to third hand exposure:

Page 23: “In contrast to the known effects of first-hand exposure, no data have been reported relating to third-hand exposure situations, which affect a greater majority of the population – that is, non-users living in dwellings (whether remediated or not) that had been previously used only for smoking of methamphetamine (Figure 4). To the best of our knowledge there is currently no available evidence in the scientific or grey literature that low-level methamphetamine exposure, involving levels that may be encountered from skin contact or oral ingestion of residues on household surfaces, poses a risk to humans.”

Page 25: “There is currently very limited toxicity data that can inform the assessment of long-term environmental exposures to methamphetamine residues.”

Page 29: “There is currently no evidence (in either humans or animals) that the levels typically resulting from third-hand exposure to methamphetamine smoking residues on household surfaces can elicit an adverse health effect. We note, however that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence of an effect. There is a clear need for more research and a co-ordinated inter-agency effort to build up a robust dataset.”

Since the Gluckman Report was written in 2018 that absence of evidence no longer exists. There is now significant scientific evidence in a report on an independent study into the effects on people’s health by third hand exposure to methamphetamine. It is titled “Environmental Methamphetamine Exposures and Health Effects in 25 Case Studies” by J. Wright, M. Kenneally, K. Ross and S. Walker published in the ‘Toxics Journal’ on 20 August 2020. Commonly referred to as the “Exposures Study”.

It is now no longer appropriate for the Gluckman report to be touted as THE paper to refer to when determining how methamphetamine contaminated properties should be dealt with and how the people and children exposed to this debilitating drug through innocently residing in a contaminated property should be treated. Any organisation whether it be government or drug agency found to be quoting this report will now find themselves open to class actions and law suits and it is this that they may need to think very seriously about that before they expose any more innocent people through negligence and distortion of the true facts.